Have you guys heard of the butterfly effect? Where would that is? I thought about it this week as I was working, trying to sum up the life of Joseph, right? The term butterfly effect, you've likely heard it because it's made its way into pop culture through books and movies, television, there's even a video game that deals with this topic.
You know, it's actually a scientific theory. It's rooted in science. Here's the actual definition of the butterfly effect. I had to write it down in chaos theory, which is its own scientific principle.
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic non-linear system can result in large differences in a later state. How about that? Write it down. It's derived, actually.
It's derived from the example of the details of a tornado, how a tornado forms the exact kind of formation, the path that it winds up taking. It's derived from that example being influenced. This is how it began. By minor, I'm going to say this word.
I tried saying it 10 times, and it still doesn't come out. It's influenced by minor perturbations. Try saying that. Perturbations, you know, you perturb me, I guess.
By minor perturbations, such as a distant butterfly slapping its wings several weeks earlier. Put in simple terms for people like me. It's how seemingly small actions or events can have large consequences on someone's life. Now, here's the thing.
It's not just a pop culture concept. It's a scientific principle. There is literally a mathematical formula that exists to measure the sensitive dependence on initial conditions. And so the butterfly effect, if it's real, right, and it appears to be.
Small decisions and actions we make today lead, and we know there's two large consequences, not just in our own lives, but in the world later. If it's true, and you believe it, I think it is, is it not terrifying? Like if you think about it, right? Like if you just stop and think about it.
I mean, if it's true, how do you even get out of bed in the morning, right? Knowing that every move you make, every thought you have, which leads to movement and action is irreparably impacting in large ways your future. Of course, if you don't get out of bed, then that will have untold large consequences on your future. And so what do you even do?
If you overthink things now, just imagine what would happen if you embraced that truth. It literally would be paralyzing, right? Like I'm not going to move, because I could screw things up really bad. Today we finish our series on Chasing After God, Given Dreams, with a look behind the scenes of our dreams.
Is there something at play in our lives, with our dreams, and our futures, other than just the butterfly effect? Are our lives merely the sum totals of the world's butterfly effect? Is what becomes of my dreams and my life? Is what becomes of me, contingent upon my actions, my decisions, or the actions and decisions of others?
Or is there something else going on? Is there in my own life and in the world in which we find ourselves living? Is there another factor? Is there an additional agent determining what becomes of me?
And what I would tell you is the answer to that question, how you and I answer that question. And again, not just with a theological answer, but really with the way we live our lives, it has profound impact. I want to thank Pete for filling in so wonderfully for me last week. Specifically, what I loved as Pete spoke last week was his nod to the impact our families of origins have.
They're good and they're bad. They're happiness and harmony and they're dysfunctions. We tend to replicate those things in our own lives. Sometimes it's merely by replication, right?
The older I get, the more I notice I'm becoming my dad. Then better yet. By the way, Snapchat had a filter, an age filter. I showed a couple of friends, I did the Snapchat.
I look exactly like my father, who's now 82. You could not see us. I mean, it was boogie. I digress.
But a lot of times, the impact of our families, we wind up replicating those things in our lives. Or the experience was so bad, it's like, well, I'm never going to be like that. In bold of those ways though, right? If you think it through, if you follow through, we can see how our dreams, the dreams that we wind up pursuing are not God's dreams.
And they're not even our own dreams. They're so often deeply impacted by others. Is it the butterfly effect? Pete showed you that principle at work in the life of Joseph last week, this singular life, whose whole story in many ways is our story.
We've been looking at the life of Joseph as we've been trying to understand what it looks like to follow our dreams. Joseph's life is so important that the author of the book of Origins, the book of Genesis and the Bible, actually spends 25% of the entire book on this one man. That's how important he was. That's how important his story is.
That's how much the author and God want you to see yourself in this story. In the life of Joseph, who was known as the Dreamer. We're going to wrap up the series this morning, but I want to catch you up on where we are. Let me plow through this really quickly.
Joseph at the age of 17, Joseph is a bit of a conniver. He's a bit of a suck up. And as a result, he winds up becoming the favorite of his father's sons. Jacob, his dad, had 12.
Joseph, the youngest, was his favorite. That's why his dad to celebrate his status gave him that famous so-called dream coat. God gave Joseph in his last years of his teens two dreams. And they were dreams about the role that Joseph was going to play, that God was going to give Joseph the play in God's redemptive story for all of mankind.
They were God-given dreams, and they were kingdom oriented dreams. And you know what Joseph did with those dreams? He did what you and I tend to do with those dreams. Joseph made those dreams about himself, just like we tend to make God-given dreams that he might have for us all about ourselves.
You see it in this moment of complete self-glorification. Joseph first goes to his brothers, and then he goes to his father, Jacob. And he tells them, hey guys, great news. I've had a couple of dreams.
I've dreamt, as he looks at his 11 brothers, that all of you one day will battle before me. And then dad checked this one out. I actually had a second dream that all of known creation also will bend a knee to me. That went over like a lead balloon.
I was trying to come up with something better. The only other one that was out there was fart in church. But I figured that wouldn't be a good one to go at. And so his brothers turn on him in this moment.
They conspire to kill him. They eventually throw him in a pit, and they sell him in this slavery in Egypt. There he's purchased by a high ranking military official. And as we've seen over the week, something begins to happen to Joseph in his years of exile and captivity.
You could call it growing up. You could call it maturing. But he begins somehow in these years of activity, despite his circumstances, to live as a man, to live as a man that believes that God is with him. What I would argue, and I think part of the story is sometimes, and you see this over and over in the scriptures, sometimes what it actually takes for the people of God to turn to God is exile and captivity.
Sometimes it takes winding up in a pit with nowhere else to turn to get us to turn to God and trust. And this begins to become Joseph's story. Well, as a result of this maturity, as a result of this determination to live, as if a man that God was with all the time, Joseph rises in prominence in the home of this man, Potiphar. That is until his wife falsely accuses him of rape.
He winds up in prison for a crime he doesn't commit. And some years later, while in prison, he interprets the dreams of two of Pharaohs. Remember, he's in prison in Egypt. Pharaoh rules the world.
Pharaoh has a couple of servants that he sends to jail. He fell out of favor. He interprets a couple of dreams for them. Joseph makes a deal with one of them, the cup error, that when he's released, which is what Joseph had foretold when he read his dream, he would tell Pharaoh Joseph's story and plead his case to the leader of the entire world.
Many of you know the story, the cup arrow Pharaoh is released and he forgets all about Joseph. And he's left again in prison. And again, years later when Pharaoh now is having some dreams of his own and he can't make any sense of the dream, the cup error is like, oh yeah, that's right. I got a guy, I can help.
And so he tells Pharaoh all about it. Well, Pharaoh summons Joseph, they clean him up, right? They shave him up. He goes, stands before the ruler of the world and he interprets the dream.
And here's what he says to Pharaoh. He says, your dream is an indication that there is going to be a great worldwide famine. And so he tells Pharaoh what to do, which is that in these coming years of plenty, the entire nation of Egypt should store up crops for these coming years of want. Pharaoh is so impressed that he makes Joseph, his prisoner, who continues to act like a man that believes God is with him.
Pharaoh puts Joseph in charge of the entire empire, essentially the entire world. Things go down in Egypt and the world exactly as Joseph predicted, right? Egypt, already the empire of the world, winds up the only nation with any crops amidst the worldwide famine and it's all because of Joseph. Now, unbeknownst to him, meanwhile, as the narrator would say, meanwhile, back in Canaan, Joseph's family is starving.
And so Joseph's father, Jacob, gathers up his remaining sons and sends them to Egypt to try and negotiate some kind of deal to get food for the family. And then what has to be a biblical level of irony, which would make perfect sense because it's in the Bible? Joseph's brothers, the ones that had conspired to kill him, the ones who threw him in, I pit, the ones who traffic them into slavery, they wind up face down in front of Joseph. They don't recognize him, but he does them.
And they're begging their brother, who they tried to destroy. They're pleading with him for mercy and food to return home with. The author writes that Joseph, not revealing his identity, begins to speak harshly to them. Of course he does, wouldn't you?
As we looked at a couple of weeks ago, Joseph had been dealing with resentment and bitterness for decades over what they had done on him. They had ruined his life, but then something powerful happened to Joseph in that moment. If you were here, you might remember it. The author tells us that it was at this moment, as his brothers knelt before him, that Joseph remembered his dreams.
And as he did, as he saw his brothers on their knees before him, as he recognized that he was actually, because of the position that Pharaoh had put him in, he was actually seemingly in charge of the entire world. It was at that moment where Joseph's brothers was at that moment, where their betrayal and their brutality lost all of their power over his past and his present. It was at that moment when Joseph was able to let go of the decades of bitterness and anger, because he realized that it was not his brothers who had put him in the situation he was in. He realized they did not have that power to get him, where he was.
He realized it was of God. This was a powerful, powerful moment in the life of Joseph. The bitterness and the resentment that had been eating and eroding his soul for decades disappears in a matter of minutes. And the thing which he was imprisoned by, the thing which he was captive to, it turned out it wasn't Potiphar or Pharaoh.
The thing which really owned him, his past and his hurt, their betrayal. In that moment, Joseph was finally free. And so here's what he says to them. Then Joseph said to his brothers, come close to me.
When they had done so, he said, I am your brother, Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt. Now I want you to know, he does not forget what they had done to him. He doesn't say, oh, it's okay. Right?
This is horrible. Joseph's not okay with it. God is not okay with it. It was sin that would be judged.
Joseph, you know, kind of says, this is what you did. There's no soft pedaling what they did. But Joseph goes on. And now he says, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.
For two years now, there's been famine in the land and the next five years, there'll be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. It was such a profound realization for Joseph in that moment that they didn't do this, that God was in charge. They were in charge, that God did it and there was a purpose for it.
And the purpose, right, was the purpose to glorify Joseph? No, that's what he originally had read and understood his own dream to be. No, God did it to save lives by a great deliverance. The dream was about how God was going to use Joseph in his redemptive plan for good, for the whole world.
Not about Joseph having the world bow down to him. It was such a profound realization for Joseph. I mean, this just is just as an earth-shattering, life-changing realization moment. He repeats it again for a third time.
He sums it up. So then he said, it was not, he can't believe it himself. Turns out it wasn't you who sent me here, but God. If you know the story, you know when the news of this reconciliation makes its way back to Pharaoh, he tells Joseph, you know what, go back to Canaan and get your entire family, including your father, and bring them all back here to Egypt.
And I am going to give your family, including your father, and your brothers. I am to give them all the best of everything. Joseph goes back and gets, brings his family into Egypt, and they enjoy the best the world has to offer for the next 17 years. In fact, this is where his father, Jacob, dies in Egypt.
And when he does, there's an interesting revelation about the heart of Joseph's brothers. Because over those 17 years, even though they've been enjoying the best of the best, they have never actually truly believed that Joseph forgave them. And of course, you can understand why, right? I mean, they tried to kill him.
They saw him bleeding in a pit. Joseph's realization had freedom, but they still, though they lived in the best of the land, though they had seemingly everything, they were still themselves imprisoned by their past and by the fear that came with it. So much so that when Jacob dies, they assumed that now that Joseph is unburned by what his father might think, that he's going to get even now. He's just being a nice guy because dad was here, but now dad's dead, and you know what he's going to do to us now?
He's going to get even. There were all the rights that when Joseph's brother saw that their father was dead. They said, what if Joseph holds a brush against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did do? So they sent word to Joseph.
I like this. They just make this up. So they sent word to Joseph saying, your father left these instructions before he died. This is what you're going to say to Joseph.
I ask you to forgive your brothers. I ask you to forgive your brothers. The sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly. Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.
When their message came to him, Joseph wept. Talk about it a couple years ago. In the story of the patriarchs in the book of Genesis, very little emotion is displayed in the entire book. And yet Joseph were told wept on seven different occasions.
So powerful the emotions in this story. And maybe none more moving than this. Joseph for 17 years had assumed his relationship with his brothers was one thing. He assumed that things had been healed and restored and reconciled.
And now he realizes for them it was something else. It was still transactional, if you will. Joseph had changed. He had shown grace and forgiveness.
They had not. And guys, I have to tell you what follows as we wrap up the story this morning. What follows is the most profound three part sermon that is relayed in two sentences that reveals the heart of the transformation that you're going to find anywhere in the scriptures. And if Joseph's heart would become our heart, if we could hear what he's about to reveal about his heart, I'm telling you, you and I would be set free from all of the things that the brothers are still struggling with.
Our past, our anger, our bitterness. I'm telling you, if you get what he's about to tell you, it would help you to overcome fear and worry and anxiety and when you're released from those things. When you're no longer imprisoned by those things, you are set free to dream again. Watch this, here comes part one of a transformed heart.
This is a young punk at 17 and now a radically changed person. But Joseph said to them, don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God, which is almost funny when you think about it, right? When he was 17 and he came to his brothers and shared his dreams, what did he tell them?
Essentially he told them that yes, I am in the place of God. They in the whole world will bow to me. His dreams were focused on him, right? He was God and the world and really the way he was reading and even God was going to wind up serving him.
And now these many years later, likely beginning 17 years earlier when he remembered the dream and reframed his life, now he realizes all of a sudden he's like, I'm not in the place of God. He doesn't even want to be in the place of God because you see, he could have had that role. They were right there again, in a sense, begging for mercy and forgiveness. He could have taken revenge.
His father was dead. He could have taken revenge. You know what it says in the scriptures, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament? Vengeance is mine, sayeth, the Lord.
He could have stepped into the role of God. He used to want it desperately. And now he has no interest in it. And here's why this is so amazing.
I never thought about this till this week. These are literally some of the last words in the entire book of Genesis. These are some of the last words in the last chapter of the first book of Genesis. Does anybody remember how the book of Genesis begins?
It begins with the creation story where in this garden of peace and perfection and enemy lurks, and what is the temptation? If you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then you can what? You can be like God. You can take the place of God and you can decide for yourself what is good and what is evil, what is wrong?
And Joseph, now in the final chapter of the book is going, I have tried that role, I have played that game. I see how that story ends. And I don't want any part of it anymore. Friends, one mark of a transformed heart.
Step one on the journey to freedom from slavery and exile. From our self-imposed exile is to get what Joseph got and give God back his rightful place in our lives. Allow God to begin again to determine and decide for each of you what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. And then to live in accordance with those plans of God.
Joseph trusts God completely at this moment. He trusts God for revenge. He doesn't seek it. He doesn't even want it.
The story starts with people trying to be like God and it ends with people just like you and I realizing, this is the quickest way to screw your life up. Am I in the place of God? And so the question for us is, where are the places in our lives? Where we continually just keep putting ourselves in the place of God?
Where we will decide for ourselves? Despite what God has said, despite what God might think, where we will decide, I understand God, but things have changed and the Bible's kind of old fashioned and I know, but my heart says, where are the places in our lives where we like Joseph believe that our dreams are for our consumption? Where are the places in our lives where we say, I will take the position, I will grab the chair of God, I will reign in my life and over others? I will, in Joseph's case, I'll take vengeance back into my own hands.
What are you grabbing? I just think it's the coolest thing in terms of how the book starts and how it finishes. This is how big a deal this concept is. And yet just when you think, like I'm looking at that and going, what a profound concept.
The entire Bible starts with this one thing and you get to the end of the story after Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, right? All of the things, Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve, no, oh, after all of it, Joseph goes, yeah, don't do that, I don't need to do that. I'm like, this is the greatest revelation ever. And then he drops two more bombshells that I think might even be more profound.
His next sentence, this is what a transformed heart starts to believe. He goes, says to his brothers, you intended harm for me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. He repeats to his brother, I get this now, for the fourth time, the revelations which set his soul free. I know what you tried to do, you intended, I mean, it wasn't just an accident, you really wanted to harm me, but what you intended for evil, God has intended it for good.
The most famous line in Joseph's story, but again, it's the fourth time he's restating it because it's that important to the story and because it's that important, listen, you need to hear this. He says it four times because it's that important to your story and how you understand God and how you get, why you can get out of bed in the morning. You intended harm for me, but God intended it for good. When you understand what Joseph is discovering here, it's what allows you to understand that the butterfly effect will not have the last word in your life.
Here's what I mean. Joseph in this moment, his seeing his life suddenly from a different perspective, at one point, right, beginning when he was in the pit and then on into the prison, he was viewing his life as a series of unfortunate and unconnected events. We do that. What happened to him?
Well, in this case, it was his brother's fault. They were to blame, they controlled his life and they destroyed his life in the model of the butterfly effect, right? It was their decisions and their actions which wound up putting him where he was. Maybe when he got older, when he matured, maybe when God first showed him his dream, maybe Joseph actually, as his thought process began to mature, maybe Joseph started going, you know what, I think about it, it's not their fault.
This is my fault. I've screwed it all up. I messed up my life. I messed up God's dream for my life.
I screwed this all up, royally, I was so self-centered and I ticked off my father and my brothers and even God had to be mad at me for making my dreams about me. So I'm in pits and I'm in prisons of my own making. I did it. They did it or I did it, but either way you look at it, I am where I am because of something I did, a decision I made, a turn I took or someone else did and it impacted me and now look, my life is ruined, my game is over, dreams dead.
That's what Joseph once thought. Is it not what we always tend to think? Good place or bad place, right? Good days or bad days.
I am here because of the actions and the agency of me or others, but suddenly Joseph goes, no, no, you don't understand. You just don't see it yet. I see things differently. I've been given a perspective that is uncommon for humankind.
I've begin to, I'm beginning to see my life from the perspective of God. Now a metaphor in my health. Have you ever used, I'm sure you have Google Maps or ways when you drive, right? Notice that when you do, Google does not give you on your navigation screen, does not give you the street view of where you are.
Imagine trying to drive by the street view, just seeing tall buildings, trees. If you did that, right, you have no perspective on where you're going, how you got there. You don't need Google Maps, just go back to a map in general. A map has a look down from the top.
They're drawn from a higher perspective. So you can actually see, oh, here's where I was. Here's where I am. And this is where I'm going.
Another metaphor that has really struck me, and I don't know if someone shared this with me or I just dawned on me. I've been sharing with friends. It comes to this important concept. It's embroidery.
I'm not much of a needle and thread guy. But you ever look at the back of embroidered art? It's a mess, right? There are strings everywhere, stretching from one place to another.
Sometimes they're tangled. Sometimes they're crossed. Sometimes there's long runs from one end to the other. Sometimes there's short lines.
Other times there's straight. Some are circuitous. But when you flip the embroidery over, you don't see any of that. You literally see this work of art.
The artist had to do on the back what he did to achieve what comes through on the front. It might not look good on the back or even make any sense. But there was a plan the whole time. Joseph's life was like that.
And so is yours. I'm telling you, the artist is working behind the scenes of our lives in ways we can't even imagine to bring about the artist's desired masterpiece. When you're in the middle of it, when seen from the back or the street built view, it makes no sense. You can't make heads or tails of it.
But seen from the front or above, it's beautiful. How do you see your lives? How do you see your troubles? From the top or from the street view?
From the back of the embroidery or from the front? Joseph says, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. He's giving us, he's sharing with you and I the view from the top, the view from the front. He brings together two concepts that you and I have held separate our entire lives.
Life is hard sometimes. Life can be downright cruel sometimes, but God is good. That's what Joseph would testify to you this morning. But we live our lives in very different fashions.
We tend to think, and as a preacher, I have to tell you religion often teaches that if we're good people, then God will like us and life will be good. And that if we're bad people, then when life is bad, we can think, well, what have we done to deserve this? Or maybe we go, I haven't done anything to deserve this. So because life is bad, God must be bad, or maybe he doesn't exist at all.
We live our lives like it's an either or equation. Joseph goes, no, no, no, you don't understand. Now you're looking at it from the back. Both are true.
Joseph would say, life is often cruel. But flipping around, God is always good. Human perspective, right? Life is good, God is good, or life is bad, God is bad.
Joseph says, when you get the right perspective on your entire life and how it's playing out, you will see it differently. Life is sometimes good and beautiful. And sometimes it is hard and cruel. Evil is very real in the world we live in.
But God is always, always, always working for good, even though it might take years or decades, or even a lifetime, or even to the last days of creation. There are two ways to live your life. The first is that when bad things happen, you get resentful, and you get bitter, and angry, and depressed. You take matters into your own hands.
You seek vengeance on your own. You begin to self-medicate the pain away and disappointment. You begin to store up treasures to ensure that nothing can touch you. Or what Joseph would say to us is that you could actually not live like that at all.
You could live differently. You could believe that no matter what's going on in your life right now, God is still good. And he has at work in your life right now. Tim Keller even ties the printable back to Joseph's father, Jacob.
Some of you know Jacob's story. Even if you don't know, you could see the point. Joseph is known as the dreamer. His father, Jacob, is known as the deceiver.
Jacob sins and lies first to his father, Isaac, then to his brother Esau. And because he sins, his life blows up. His family blows up. He lives life oftentimes on the run.
And yet, because he did this, because he sinned, he found the love of his life for Rachel. And because he sinned, only because of this, did he have the 12 children he did, which go on to become the nation of Israel, from which comes Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. Did God approve of the sin of Jacob? Of course not.
He didn't have to sin. He shouldn't have sinned. And his life is a story of the consequences of that sin. And yet, we would think that since he did all these things wrong, he must have God, must have abandoned him.
God must have checked out on him. He had to erect his role in God's plan. He ruined his life. He screwed up so royally that now it must use for him on to plan B.
But yet, I think we would all argue that Jesus Christ is no one's plan B. It was still plan A. Do you understand what this means? Do you understand why this allows you to get out of bed in the morning?
Because not only can other people not ruin your life, not only can other people not ruin the dreams that God has for you, even you can't ruin the plans and the dreams that God has for you. Even you can't screw it up. You meant it for evil and it was. But Joseph now understands that they had no power over him.
That God meant it for good. And if this was true in Joseph's life, I'm here to tell you as we wrap this story up, it is true in yours. It is a profound biblical concept that very few people want to deal with. But I am telling you, the butterfly effect does not have the last word in our world.
Paul tried to explain this to some New Testament believers. Here's what he wrote. And we know, he said, that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who've been called according to his purposes. God works in all things, not just good things, not just right things, not just holy things, but in bad things and evil things, in our own screw ups, in our own sin.
This concept is everywhere in the Scriptures. Proverbs points out this ancient book of wisdom taught of this way in their hearts, humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps. I hope that you believe and your experience has been here that Men in Hills has been used by God in your life for good and in our community for good. And around the world in places like Guatemala for good.
I know that's true in my life. I have been blessed to be a pastor on staff here for over 20 years. And yet, do you know why I'm here today telling you about Joseph? It's because some years ago, I had partial ownership of a private equity investment company.
And we had invested all the money we had raised. So I had some time on my hands. And at the time, the leadership of the church asked if I would be willing with that time on my hands to work a day or two a week here to help the church. That's how I wound up starting here.
Now, why did I have ownership in a private equity company? Because I had worked for an investment arm in three prior banks. And each time the bank got sold, usually because the bank was in bad shape, our unit was moved from bank to bank. And the last time the unit was sold, we had to written into the sale contract.
But if it happened again, we would get a chance to buy the assets ourselves. How did I get the job in the investment arm of that bank? Sitting in my cubicle one day, some guy that I've never seen or heard of walks into my cubicle and goes, are you John Isman? And I said, yeah.
And he said, we're starting an investment arm of the bank. It's just me and one other guy. We're looking for one other guy. And people have been telling me to come talk to you.
I went to my boss at the time and said, I'm thinking about doing this. And she told me it was career suicide. Turns out she was right. It would lead to the end of that career.
Well, how did I wind up at the bank? Well, because when I was in Rutgers, a prestigious academic institution, when I was at Rutgers, I was having a lot of fun, too much fun. And it never occurred to me that the point to being at Rutgers was to get a job. So I had actually not done anything about getting a job.
And then when I was a senior, all of my friends were getting jobs. And I thought to myself, what? This is not good. I haven't done anything about this.
I better start calling around. I'm going to find out. I missed everything. My laziness had caused me to miss all the job fairs and all the rest.
So my dad was in banking. And I thought, well, maybe I'll call some of these banks. I started calling around to the biggest banks in the state to see if I could get in on their training program. And all of them told me, no.
I'm like, dude, you should have been working on this two years ago. Where have you been? I'm like, well, you know, having fun? And so I didn't get any positions until one day my phone rang in my dorm room.
And it was first, but only bank was the biggest bank in the state at the time. He goes, you know what? When you called here the other day, he goes, we had nothing for you. It's kind of weird that you called though.
Because now this guy that had an interview scheduled, he was skiing this weekend. And he broke his leg. He can't take the interview. We're in this room this morning here at Joseph because I like the party too much of Rutgers.
And some guy broke his leg skiing in 1989. Do you see the back of the embroidery? And by the way, we're in to be ridiculous to think that's why all those things happened. A billion other things happened out of all of those things.
This is who God is. Do you understand how powerful this truth is if you really believe it? If you lived like this was true? You can't screw God's plans up for you, and neither can anyone else.
The butterfly effect does not have the final word over your life. Do you realize the fear and the panic and the anxiety, the giant waste of time they are? When you begin to trust that despite what circumstances currently exist in your life, that God is still good. And he is still with you just like Joseph.
And he is at work in your life. Oh, if you would just trust the artist. What's the point of it all? Of all the plot twists and the script flips.
Here's how Paul summed it up. He said, for those God for new, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. All of it, all of it, of the crazy turns and the knots and the weird runs, all of it. It's happening to us and for us with this singular purpose of mind to conform us, to mold us, to shape us, the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the holy and the evil.
It's all being used by God to conform us into the image of his son to make us beautiful like Jesus. I just want to read, I'm just going to read a straight paragraph from the Scriptures and then I'm going to close. Here's what Paul continued on to try to explain this principle to the church in Rome. He said, he actually ends with a question, one that I'll ask you.
What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who could be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all? How will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
He won't bring any charge against those who's God and who God has chosen. It's God who justifies who then is the one who condemns. No one. Christ Jesus who died more than that, who is raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? He goes on about circumstance. Here's Joseph's sword right here. She'll trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword.
As it's written for your sake, we face death all day long. We're considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No. In all of those terrible things, we're more than conquerors through him who loved us, for I am convinced.
That neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, nor anything else in all of creation, even you, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. All of it. All of it was to conform us to Jesus. All of it was part of God's redemptive plan to make you beautiful and to restore and renew and redeem the entire creation.
Remember that famous line from Joseph? The last point, I told you, there was three points in the story. The last line was, you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. We just talked about that, but check this out.
Why did he do that? To accomplish what's now being done, the saving of many lives. God was conforming Joseph into the image of Jesus, and here's why. Because Jesus, as Paul just said, Jesus is the better Joseph.
Think about what Joseph was doing. Jesus is now doing. He sits at the right hand of God, just like Joseph, at the right hand of Pharaoh. Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father.
And what was Joseph doing? Joseph was mirroring what Jesus has done. Joseph is forgiving those who betrayed him. And what does Joseph do with the power of the position of the authority that he's given?
Joseph again is being conformed into the image of Christ. Long before Christ came, Joseph is using his power in his position to save others. Friends, this is the story of Joseph. It's mine, it's yours, and if you would own it, you'd be set free.
And you know what free people do? Free people dream. Let's stand and close this up.